4 double kitkats in a jar.  Sold from a vending machine.  Sandwiched between cold drinks on one side and hot coffee on the other.  How does it survive?  The technology is amazing. What is the best thing that you have ever bought from a vending machine?  

Post from: Blisstree

Vending machine snacks

Picture 3 Australians crowded around a table.  One is studying Kanji, another is studying Japanese grammar and the third is studying the Japanese Lonely Planet.  Out comes a packet of this chocolate with macha and you can probably guess what happened.

Our analysis was short and sweet.  One said “great”, one said 8 out of 10, and the other just kept eating away.  The overall opinion was very good.  For a weird concept like a sandwich of chocolate containing a layer of macha (green tea) flavoured chocolate, I was nicely surprised. 

Of course most of the flavour was actually ordinary chocolate but you definitely got a hint of the macha along the way.  It made me wonder what macha chocolate would be like by itself.  I put that wondering to work and I hope we’ll all have some answers soon.

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Chocolate with matcha

This is the third type of choco pan that I had in mind when I wrote about the three types back here.  This one has to be the lowest level of choco pan.  Simply a long life type bread stick.  Dry and tasteless.  Dipped in chocolate.  These guys exist on the shelf next to cookies and sembe for who knows how long.  How does bread stay edible for that long?  I guess the real question is “Is the bread ever edible?” 

If it didn’t say choco pan on the packet I wouldn’t have dared to mix it in with the other distinguished varieties.  It was out of my control.  Someone out there in marketing land thought it was cool to disrespect existing food in an attempt to stow away on a reputation.  I disagree.

Lisa from Lunchbucketbento described an equally valid third type of choco pan, so if she is willing, I am going to send her a little package containing something for her to taste and report back to us on.  I will make contact with her this week and set it up.

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Choco pan type 3

Lisa from Lunchbucketbento was on the same wavelength as me when she picked this one other type of choco pan.  Have a look at her description in the comments to this post.  You can understand what she is talking about if you look at where I took a bite in the photo.  It has a swirled pattern of chocolate throughout the bread.  Even though this is just a cheap and nasty supermarket version, it still tastes alright.  Nothing like good bakery style choco pan.  They are in a league of their own.

Post from: Blisstree

Choco pan type 2

Pino are a classic Japanese ice cream.  Typically vanilla ice cream shaped like a tiny fez covered in chocolate.  This week I discovered dark chocolate Pino and was very happy.  There is nothing particularly unusual about the ice cream or the chocolate but they make studying Japanese Kanji (as you can see behind the box in the photo) so much more relaxing.  A box of six Pino like this costs about 100 Yen and will get me through about half an hour of Kanji before I have to go searching for more snacks.  I think that snacks and study go hand in hand.  The more snacks, the longer I can study and so the better the results.  Thanks you Pino!

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Dark Chocolate Pino

Saturday was cold, in fact bitterly cold.  I had been training on my bike up and down Mt Tsukuba until I was almost dead with cold and exhaustion.  I had just an easy flat ride to get me back to a shop and about 20 minutes to devise the perfect snack to keep me alive.  This is what I came up with:

1) A can hot red bean soup

2) A cheap and nasty bluberry bread bun

3) A block of creamy chocolate

4) A glass of sake

That was the best that I could imagine (and also have a reasonable expectation of finding at the shop I was heading to).  I think I cracked the perfect freezing weather reward.  Maybe you have other ideas.  What is your favourite cold weather snack?  Something quick, delicious and warming?

Post from: Blisstree

The reward

The last post was about choco pan.  Now this is not to be confused with the totally different species known as choco pie.  Normally choco pie is a sort of biscuit/cake that lives in with the sweets and cookies in a supermarket.  They consist of a sandwich of sweet soft biscuits, some cream and heaps of chocolate.  They are neither classy or refined but they are delicious and remind me of “Wagon wheels” if that means anything to you.

This photo is actually of choco pie ice creams which I had not seen before.  They stuffed them full of ice cream and froze it all together.  I can’t say they are any better than conventional choco pie, but they aren’t any worse and so I can’t complain

Post from: Blisstree

Choco pie

Choco pan is Japanese for Chocolate bread.  It is found all over Japan but takes three main forms.  The first is pictured here and is probably the sweetest and stickiest.  It is basically a low grade sweet bread roll that is filled with chocolate cream (sort of like a bitter chocolate mouse).  In this case, it was a cheap convenience store snack, so the quality was quite poor, but the chocolate to bread ratio was exceptional.  About 3 to 1.

If you can guess and describe the other two styles of choco pan I’d love to hear from you.  And this time there will be a reward for both types.  If you are enough of an expert to get both of them right then I’ll send you something sweet and Japanese for you to eat and review so we can all learn about it.  I’ll write about the next one early next week so you have until the end of the weekend.

Post from: Blisstree

Choco Pan Type 1

I scored a bag of these wasabi flavoured chips from the 98 yen aisle of my local supermarket this week.  Needless to say they didn’t last very long.  Not only did they have a beautiful wasabi flavour (with the heat that really gets up your nose), but they also look quite like wasabi roots themselves. 

Of course they are just artificial foam sort of stuff like twisties with a coating of wasabi flavour but their green colouring and unmistakable aroma made it seem instantly legitimate.  Not that I would ever consider chomping down wasabi roots without serious medical support.  But they gave me the impression that eating whole wasabi roots was not only possible but actually a pleasant experience.  A dangerous delusion.

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Wasabi chips

I was wondering why I never saw beetroot here in Japan.  Then the other day I tried Japanese beetroot chips and I understood.  Not only are they the best that I have ever tried, but they even beat wasabi potato crisps.  I have a theory that all of the healthy fresh beetroot is being diverted to the chip kitchen and being dried, cooked and sugared.  I can’t back this up with evidence but I’d love to see someone prove me wrong.

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Beetroot chips